Download the free app

Adolfo Kaminsky Save Thousands From Nazi Deportation As A Teenager

October 13, 2016

Written byCuriosity Staff

Share

What were you doing at 18? Maybe you had a cool part-time job at a record store, were preparing to go off to college, or did community service around town with your church. As impressive as it was, it probably doesn't even come close to what Adolfo Kaminsky was putting his effort toward. While just a teen during World War II, Kaminsky saved thousands of lives from the Nazis by forging passports.

In 1944, Adolfo Kaminsky was an 18-year-old boy in Paris. He was also the lab director for a group of people making up a secret Jewish resistance cell. Their Parisian lab fabricated passports for children and families who were about to be deported to concentration camps. They told their neighbors they were painters so they wouldn't question the chemical smells. Kaminsky saved thousands of lives by his 19th birthday by creating fake passports by hand to get people into hiding, or help them cross borders to escape the Nazis. According to The New York Times, Kaminsky went on to "forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century." Learn more about this amazing man in the short documentary below.